Meeting with the lay midwives

The last week of January John (our nurse midwife) and I had a meeting with the lay midwives in the communities. John has done some teaching in the past, but had not met with them for a year. Now that we have a little more support from our local Centro de Salud through the department of health, we are ready to get started again. Since I am new to the area it is a good excuse to "start over". We had our typical lengthy Honduran introductions and then spent the rest of the two hours asking them questions about their needs, what the women in the communities believe about labor and delivery, what the lay midwives believe about what happens and why and how to handle it. Mostly it was a "getting to know each other" session. We were encouraged by some very correct responses, scared by others. But we were overall encouraged that the ladies who showed up are interested in learning. The ladies that work farther back in the mountains have a reputation for 'doing their own thing' and not being interested in learning or coming to meetings. We are praying for wisdom in how to reach them and get them involved. I kept emphasizing that our goal is to have healthy moms and healthy babies and we need to work together to achieve that goal.

Some of the more humorous responses: don't let new Mom's eat green things or the baby will poop green and that is bad, women have increased vaginal secretions during pregnancy because the baby is spitting a lot, women get infections after delivery because they have sex too soon and "men are dirty down there", women get postpartum infections because they eat dirt......:)